Saline
by Lirazel
Summary: “The cure for anything is saltwater—sweat, tears or the sea.” – Isak Dinesea


_Saline_

This is a little different, but I hope you enjoy it.

_Disclaimer: It's all JKR's._

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"_The cure for anything is salt-water - sweat, tears or the sea." _

_Isak Dinesea_

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He has always had a twitchy sort of energy, the kind only young boys and puppies possess, though his had lingered long after the rest of him eased toward manhood. He suspects that the fact that most people have never taken him seriously has something to do with this—it is so hard to think of someone as worth listening to when they couldn't sit in a chair for even a moment without fidgeting. He always hated it in himself, especially as he got taller and during that stretch when he hadn't yet grown into his hands and feet, because it made him so very clumsy. He was always tripping over things and running into people—though not as often as Neville; poor, tragic Neville who would now never trip over anything ever again.

Once during Transfiguration class when he had failed for the fourteenth time to turn his quill into a candle, McGonagall had become so frustrated with him that she sputtered out, "Weasley, if you could focus your mind and sit still for more than two minutes together, you might not be so abysmal at this!" It reminded him so of something Hermione would say—and actually, the look in Hermione's eyes as she studied him from behind the glow of the candelabra she'd transfigured told him that she couldn't agree with the professor more—that he had turned scarlet, starting with his ears and spreading down, he was sure, to his very toes.

And then, of course, came the dark days, when there was no _time_ to be still, when every moment was too dangerous to let one's guard down, and then his constant tension had been transformed into constant vigilance, and he was thankful for it, for his wand was always at the ready. He was sure that the pacing he had done when it was his turn for guard duty had saved their lives more than once when he would stalk around a corner and find the hint or echo or scent of a threat. He always believed, in the moments before he would fall into snatched hours of exhausted sleep, that after the war was over, he would like to spend a few years on a beach or in an abandoned cabin and just be _still_.

He finds now that he was wrong.

From the moment he rises with the sun—Ron, who has always wished he could sleep till noon—to the time he sinks into sleep at night, he works. He hammers and saws and lifts and sands and measures and hoists and bends, stopping only for meals and water or when Hermione comes and stands under the apple tree with her hands on her hips and yells up to him that he's going to kill himself if he doesn't take a rest. Then he'll climb down from the beams and lope over to her and wrap his arms around her and kiss her neck, and she will protest and squeal and snap that he stinks and is getting her all sweaty, and for a few moments they will both forget about the tearstains on her cheeks.

He builds. He builds and builds and does not stop, does not want to. First it was the Burrow, and then Hogwarts, and then the Ministry, and then places in Diagon Alley and Hogsmead, and no one could understand why he insisted on doing all he was assigned by hand instead of by wand—they really couldn't understand why he worked at all when he was _Ron Weasley_, and everyone knew that, if he wanted to, he could spend the rest of his life doing nothing more than being famous. But though he once envied Harry's renown, he has discovered that it does not satisfy, and so he works.

There is something so healing about good, earthy work. Something so _right_ about creating something after all these years of taking lives, something so perfect about having time to measure twice and cut once and pause for a picnic after what seemed like centuries of running and fighting and watching friends die. He welcomes it all, from the splinters and sore thumbs to the aching bones and the sweat.

He especially welcomes the sweat. It seems to be purging his system of years of fear and pain and resentment, bringing all of that outside of him till it is stolen away by the sun. And though Hermione complains, he suspects that she understands, because sometimes she will wipe the dampness from his forehead with her bare hand, and the old Hermione would never have done that.

For the first time in years, he goes to sleep every night perfectly content.

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She has always thought of tears as a sign of weakness and was ashamed whenever she was overcome. She has never done anything halfway—indeed, she's never known how—but always poured all of herself into everything she does. Crying was the same way, and on the occasions that she let tears overcome her, they exploded from her eyes, wracking her small body with sobs and leaving her exhausted and shaky and with an aching head after the sobs faded to whimpers. She used to scare the boys, especially Ron, when she did that, and she would spend the days after a breakdown cursing herself mentally for giving in.

She always believed that she had to be strong, strong for Ron and for Harry, for her worrying parents, for the younger students, for the other Muggle-borns, for the whole world, really. As she got older, she cried less and less, and after Dumbledore's funeral—one of the few times she believed herself justified in her weeping—she did not cry for years. Not when they started losing classmates and Ron started losing siblings that she thought of as her own and the Order started losing members that it could not afford to be without. Not when they told her Hogwarts had been destroyed, razed to the ground, leaving only the dungeons in tact. Not when the news came about her parents. Not even after the final battle when she was so filled with relief that she was numb.

During all that time, on the rare moments when she had time to think about it, she was proud of herself. Proud that she could be strong for others, proud that she didn't waste valuable time and energy on something so frivolous, even proud—though she hated to admit it—that she no longer violated her own pride. Though at first it was a fight every single night to keep the tears from forcing themselves out of her ducts—Ron's arms around her helped—after a time she no longer felt even the desire to cry. It was as though all of her tears had dried up, as though the only liquid in her body was blood that could far too easily be spilt. She thought, standing on the blasted field after Harry's last curse found its mark, _I will never cry again._

She was wrong, of course. It started as a single tear at the memorial for the heroes of the war, the water crystal and warm, catching the light after so long a time of darkness and cold, sliding silently over the curve of her cheek and down to her chin, only to drip off into the hollow formed by her collarbone. It stayed there till it itched and she had to acknowledge it, swiping it away with an impatient hand.

It all came so quickly after that. One moment she was vaguely irritated with that tear; the next she was sobbing so hard that she could barely breath, so hard that it doubled her over, so hard that Ron wrapped his arms around her to keep her upright, so hard that he and Harry started exchanging concerned looks.

And she has not really stopped since then. She cried for three hours straight at the memorial—more tears than she would have thought her body was capable of holding—till she ran out and had to drink a whole pitcher of water, gulping from the glass thirstily, and started again. Sometimes she goes four or five waking hours without a single tear, but sooner or later they will start again, sometimes slipping fluidly down her face in groups of ten or twelve, sometimes so many that she thinks they could fill an ocean. They make the words on the paper in front of her turn to blurs, and they leave sad little circles on the parchment, and the letters run. They fall into the food as she prepares meals, and Harry jokes that everything she makes is too salty for his tastes. They leave stains on her cheeks till Ron teases her that they will be there forever. The tears are never far away.

She thinks herself rather foolish now. Foolish for being so ashamed of tears, for denying herself the catharsis they provide. Because they _are_ healing, in such a strange way, as though they are washing the whole world clean, as though she is weeping away every sorrow and agony and hatred till there is nothing left but beautiful, sad memories.

She even cries when she lies in Ron's arms at night, and though at first, she knows, this hurt and bewildered him, now she knows that he understands. Because even when she's crying, even when she's mourning, she's living, really living, and is happier than she ever thought she could be.

And for the first time in years, she sees that sometimes it's all right to be weak, especially with those who love you.

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He has always longed for the sea. When he was tiny, he would look at pictures in Dudley's books and slide his fingers over the printed waves that the ships sailed on, and though they felt slick as paper under his fingers, he always imagined that he was touching the ocean itself. He would sneak out into the living room at night and switch the television on, turning the volume down to nothing, and sitting in the blue light of the screen, flipping channels till he found a glimpse of a beach or a pirate ship or anything, anything involving the ocean.

There was a print, framed in a gaudy gold frame and hung in the hallway outside the bathroom, of a beach scene. Aunt Petunia had horrible taste in art—she always bought flashy, busy paintings of pink-cheeked women and extravagantly-clad men dancing around rooms that looked like they belonged in Versailles or still lives that were so still that they seemed dead. But this one painting had been given to her by Uncle Vernon's great-aunt when they married, and so she had to hang it, for whenever Great-great-aunt Ruthie visited, she demanded to see the painting she had bought. Harry was always grateful to her for that painting. He liked to stand right in front of it, so close that his nose was almost touching the glass, pretending that he was standing on that shore, with sand gritty and wet under his bare toes, or that one day the waves in the painting would start moving, and he would fall through the frame and into the water. He had read a book like that once, and it never left him.

But he had never actually _seen_ the ocean till that night Uncle Vernon decided they had to run away from the Hogwarts letters and had locked them in that tiny cabin on that tiny island. That barely counted, of course, because it was pitch black outside and he nearly didn't get a glimpse of it even as they were crossing it. His first sight of the sea had been as much of a nightmare as his life before that moment.

Then there was school most of the year, and he had no family to take him on trips to the shore, though his aunt and uncle would sometimes take Dudley, leaving him alone with only Arabella Figg to look after him, and Hermione would come back from vacation brown all over from weeks spent by the water, and even Ron had been once or twice. Once he finally grew up enough to go on his own, there was never time--not for Harry Potter, the savior of the world, the one everyone relied on--to take off and spend a jolly holiday on the beach.

Now, there is time. Nothing but time, it seems, and so little to fill it up. He rises every morning with the sun, heading out of the tent he shares with his best friends, passing Ron as the other man goes out to work on the house he's building, and setting out at a jog down the winding path between the apple trees. He runs easily, bare feet pounding the dust and sending up little clouds of brown, between the hills and towards the glint of light on water.

No matter the weather, if it's beautiful or foggy or storming or snowing, he runs to the sea. He mounts the top of the hill and suddenly it is filling his senses, endless and eternal, grey and blue and green and gold and white and every other color in the world, infinite in moods and temperaments, but always, always there. He runs along the shore, feeling the sand under his feet just as he once dreamed, hearing the waves drumming against the shore, feeling the tide curl around his ankles, smelling the brine and tasting the splash of salt on his lips. He runs and runs and runs and runs and runs.

He runs back to the meadow for breakfast or lunch or dinner, which Hermione has made on the stove in the tent, and on good days they eat outdoors, Ron laying aside his tools for an hour or so, Hermione putting down her quill, the three of them sitting on the unfinished floor of Ron's house, the supports and ceiling beams rising up around them like a forest. And they talk: about what their friends are doing, about the letters they have received, about the weather, about the book Hermione is writing—a long, long one, one which she may never finish, which she may work on until she dies, telling the stories of every single person who died fighting for the light during the war—about the house Ron is building—it's going to be beautiful here, way out in the country where no one will bother them, and of course Hermione is going to live with him, and Harry is invited, too, though he knows that he will not. The spot Ron has picked is close to the ocean—you can see the sun shining off of it from the front door—but it is not close enough for Harry. Perhaps when Ron is done with his house, Harry will ask him for help building his own. He will build it as close to the edge of the water as he can find solid ground for a foundation, and he will have windows all facing in the direction of the waves, and perhaps one day he will ask Ginny to come, and there were be children, and visiting back and forth with the other house, just down the road, where the rest of his family will live.

But for now it is enough to have meals and evenings with Ron and Hermione and the rest of the day full of the sea. And the motion and the sound of the waves, and the lonely cry of the sea birds, and the feel of the water embracing him, is a reminder of life and of the constancy and changeability of all things. And the water washes his wounds away and heals his scars, and he is alive.

For the first time in years, he feels full instead of empty.

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